This year's Chicago Humanities Festival theme will be "Speed," the institution was set to announce Tuesday, but that doesn't mean the annual autumn cultural event will play like NASCAR of the north.

Feminist icon Gloria Steinem, "Daily Show" host Trevor Noah and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman are among the small first group of speakers the CHF is announcing for events beginning Oct. 13 and running through Nov. 12. A full lineup of more than 100 events will be released in early September.

And they all fit under "Speed" because that term can be interpreted broadly and with inherent contradictions, explained artistic director Jonathan Elmer.

"Our expectation is that the theme will apply immediately to the lives we are living and then it will unfold in different dimensions," he said. "We assume people will see that word and they'll think, 'Life is speeding up.' And then there will probably be a second reaction: 'And yet there is lots of slowing down, with yoga and slow food and going into Intelligentsia and watching the guy take two-and-a-half minutes pouring your coffee for you.' "

Beyond that, he added, there is the speed of change in the Earth's environment to deal with, plus the expectations for speed that have been put upon us by the spread and advancement of digital technology.

Case in point: Elmer was talking from Vienna, Austria — where he and other CHF personnel were meeting with past artistic director Matti Bunzl — over a Google Voice connection costing 2 cents per minute.

"I like this theme's openness to areas we've tended not to have as much of: a little more technology, a little more science, a little more economics," he said. "And it's also a great theme specifically for performing arts, music, dance. We've got some things lined up that are quite unusual."

So, yes, pretty much anybody can be covered by the penumbra of speed, and if not, "There definitely will be a handful of people we're not even going to try to link to the theme," said Elmer. "It's just that they're great, they're interesting and we think our audiences will like them."

With 2016 as its 27th season, the festival has grown to present more than 100 events in Chicago and Evanston each fall, including performing arts events and small group tours, but mostly a series of talks and public discussions featuring authors, academics and other intellectuals.

This year, the closing evening will see a program in Chicago's African-American Bronzeville neighborhood, part of a recent push by the private, not-for-profit organization to spread its wings. The 2015 event closed with programming in the heavily Latino Pilsen neighborhood.

"That's the idea, to get out into the city," Elmer said. "We'll be doing some different places, a little bit more in the South Loop than we have in the past."

Other speakers mentioned in Tuesday's announcement were architect and urban designer Marshall Brown and Yaa Gyasi, Ghana-born and Alabama-raised author of the forthcoming novel "Homegoing."

Tickets to the Steinem and Friedman events, which kick off the festival, go on sale to CHF members Aug. 16 and to the public a week later. Tickets for the remainder of the festival go on sale to members Sept. 20, a week ahead of their availability to the public.

A version of this article appeared in print on June 14, 2016, in the Arts + Entertainment section of the Chicago Tribune with the headline "Emphasis on speed at Humanities Festival" —
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